


even a small cough, even a small love

by 2ne4 (17826)



Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Fluff, Gender Issues, Gender nonconforming Harry, Genderfluid Character, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Praise Kink, Sexual use of movie quotes, Vulnerability, blink and you miss it angst, mutual love and support, this is somehow both the porniest and most wholesome thing i've ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 15:37:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14381697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/17826/pseuds/2ne4
Summary: Harry didn't like Call Me By Your Name the first time he watched it, and Nick takes that personally.





	even a small cough, even a small love

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer : obviously this is entirely fictional , i don't even slightly claim to know what real Harry's actual relationship to gender is . This is just to explore my own gender identity in the guise of some of my biggest idols , the issues i project onto Harry here being v much in the same ballpark as my own experiences with dysphoria and fluidity
> 
> Having said that , obvs one experience =/= all experiences , and i do not claim to know everything about the complex issues of gender presentation . I also want to emphasise that although this involves both gender nonconforming bodies and sex , this is in no way meant to fetishise gender nonconforming people , but intends to be a way to explore the vulnerabilities of a character in a moment of honesty and loving connection
> 
> I have tried my best to be respectful and hope that in reflecting my own experiences , i do not trivialise or play into stereotypes , but feel free to let me know if u have anything to say in that regard
> 
> Title taken from that lovely Anne Sexton quote that's always floating around tumblr : As it has been said : Love and a cough cannot be concealed . Even a small cough . Even a small love .

They hadn't done this in so long; it had been maybe two years since their last proper kiss, their last anything beyond the occasional drunken snog. _Pinch yourself_ , a bit of Nick's brain supplied helpfully, but Nick decided that on the off-chance he wasn't dreaming, he'd rather not risk Harry noticing and thinking it was some fun new kink to try out. _You don't want to go into work tomorrow covered in little red pinch marks_ , he reasoned, and Fiona would literally never let him live it down if he did because she knew he had had Harry staying over. She'd find a way to mention it on air and then Pixie would text him a winky emoji and he'd have to try and remember what shade he was for concealer, and really that was all too much effort.

"Can you just-" Harry pulled away and sat back with a huff, frowning slightly at him. "Can you stop thinking so loudly?"

"Sorry, your Royal Highness, I'm not just a piece of meat, y'know, I have, like..." His voice trailed off as Harry wiped the back of his hand against his mouth, dragging at his lips. "A rich internal life, or something," Nick finished lamely.

Harry grinned and leaned back towards him, reaching for his face, but Nick turned away, aloof. "No," he said as Harry's lips pressed wetly to his cheek, "no, I'm watching the movie. You need to watch the movie, Harold."

"I don't," he whispered against Nick's neck, "I've seen it already, it was whatever, I'd rather do this," and he pressed an open mouthed kiss against his jaw, and another, working upwards-

"But you can't not like call me by your name," Nick said, turning his head ever so slightly, so the corner of his mouth came into Harry's reach. "It's gunna be one of those seminal classics, or whatever." He gave up and turned fully to meet Harry's lips, and would have done too if not for one snag.

Harry sat back and smirked at him. "Okay," he smiled, casual as anything, and pulled Nick's feet up into his lap. He focused back on the screen and Nick tried not to feel like he had whiplash. He looked over at the movie blankly as Timothée Chalamet ducked out of the reach of Armie Hammer's back massage-ing hands, then back at Harry, who was now watching intently. _What the fuck_  asked his brain.

 _Well, at least I know I'm not asleep_ , he thought as he tried to regulate his breathing, _because he'd be naked by now if I was, or he'd be Elio._  Then he stopped that line of thought in its tracks, labelling it Potentially Too Close To Examining The Particulars Of Why It's Important To Me That Harry Likes This Film. He'd perfected the art of stopping thoughts in their tracks long before the radio had necessitated it. Anyway, there was a good bit coming up, and if Harry wanted to play it cool, then Nick could play it even cooler. _Unlikely_ , snorted the Fiona that lived in his head, but he ignored her.

 

"So, what did you think this time?" He asked, after Timothée's poetically miserable face had faded from the screen, and he told himself that the affectation in his voice from his few manly tears was definitely not gross and snotty.

Luckily, Harry was also a crier. "Yeah," he said wetly, scrubbing the heels of his palms under his eyes, "yeah, that was... I don't know why I didn't like it before, wrong mood I guess."

"There is no wrong mood for this," Nick said imperiously, then backtracked, "unless you mean...?"

"Yeah, 'spose. Wasn't feeling so much of the, uh, male identifier that day."

Nick nodded carefully, never having been quite in his element when it came to Harry's complex relationship with gender. "And today?"

"Just made more sense today."

"That's good," Nick hedged his bets, then grinned at Harry. "Don't you just want to become a lazy academic on the Mediterranean coast though?"

"Oh, always," Harry replied seriously. "Peach juice for days? Love it."

"Dirty infant," Nick said automatically, although he wasn't really either anymore. Harry only hummed in response, face guarded.

"Things like this make more sense to me when I'm hanging out with you anyway," Harry then said casually, as if he wasn't admitting anything more intimate than his favourite colour. Nick's throat was immediately dry.

"Things like this?"

"Yeah," he smiled. _Right then, that's all cleared up,_  Nick's internal monologue supplied rather hysterically. On his ankle, Harry's thumbs started drawing little circles as he hummed along vaguely to the soundtrack, watching the credits scroll; Nick couldn't tear his eyes away but Harry didn't notice, chipped black nail polish glittering against Nick's winter pale skin.

 _Rom coms? Male-ness? Not making out but instead watching a film? The eighties?_ His brain provided a long list of potential 'things like this' as they sat quietly. The box of Reasons I Want Harry To Like This Film started to rattle in a far flung corner of his brain.

"I'll take Pig out for a piss," Harry interrupted his thoughts as the DVD reverted to the menu, "then bed, yeah?"

"Sounds good," Nick agreed, lifting his feet to let Harry up. Once the door had clicked shut behind them, he stretched and yawned as he collected their takeout boxes and dumped them in the sink to be dealt with tomorrow. In his minds eye, he ran through the itinerary for the show in the morning as he did his skincare, trying to remember what he'd lined up for the nixtape. Halfway through brushing his teeth, Harry slipped into the shower behind him and they briefly duetted on some fugees until Harry's voice had warmed up to full capacity, at which point Nick left in order to preserve his self-esteem. Back in his room, he double checked his alarms and put his phone on to charge after tweeting something inane, then a tiny voice in his head reminded him, _you were kissing Harry earlier_.

To say he'd forgotten was an overstatement, because one doesn't just forget about being kissed by Harry Styles, but really good kisses sometimes posses that weird quality of really good gigs, where it feels like it took place out of time. Not something that happened in real time but instead something that always had happened, with no time before or after. That's what the kiss earlier had been, really good.

Nick wasn't an idiot; he'd noticed, over the years, his list of Reasons Not To Kiss (Now Former) Boybander Harry Styles has dwindled from a double sided A4 to more of a couple scribbles on a napkin. The biggest one was now Constant Touring, and even he could admit that that was a weak one because _it's not like he's asking you to get married and live monogamously ever after_ , echoed Aimee's voice in his head. It's just a kiss, and then hopefully some mind-and-other-organ-blowing sex with only minimal introspection and feelings. That last part was the tricky one because Harry had this awful habit of making people understand that they wanted to become happy, and that he could help them do it.

"Terrible," Nick blurted out, as the offending party walked into the room.

Harry's eyebrows rose. "What have I done now?"

"Nothing," Nick said, chucking an old radio 1 t-shirt at him as he lay down on the bed, naked as the day, "now put on some pyjamas, for God's sake."

"It's warm in here," Harry lied, catching the shirt and dropping it on the floor behind him. He watched Nick with a face as close to impassive as he could ever get.

Nick's mental napkin list had been reduced to more of a mental napkin statement now, in almost illegible handwriting, something about wanting more than he could have and getting hurt in the end, but Nick could have been wrong about that, really. _Can't be that important or you'd have written it slower_ , he argued. Harry's hand had been edging across the bed, and now it came to rest at his fingertips.

"Would you act in something like call me by your name?" He asked, voice hardly more than a breath.

"Reckon I'm well suited for it?" Harry murmured, and shifted closer.

Nick's mind's eye supplied, not for the first time, a Harry in an oversized blue shirt and swimming shorts, towel tucked around his shoulders. "I'd cast you," he replied honestly.

"What about my audition?" Harry's voice dropped into a corny American accent, little above a whisper, an impression of Armie Hammer that would have been laughable anywhere else. "I touched you just so you'd know I liked you," and- _oh._

Nick's brain grew quiet for maybe the first time in his life. No thought processed as he met Harry in the middle, clutching at his waist as he held Nick's jaw almost delicately. He was rough with Harry in all the ways Harry was gentle, his desperation betraying him, until Harry bit his lip and more or less growled.

"Take that dumb t-shirt off or I'll rip it."

"Rip it," Nick said breathlessly, and Chris Moyles' face was torn in two as his Radio X promotional t-shirt died a death.

"Good fucking riddance," Harry said with uncharacteristic venom, and Nick wondered if maybe Harry had been one of those kids that had stopped listening to Radio 1 after the breakfast show host had complained about a ringtone being gay. Not for the first time, a deep kind of pride kicked in at the thought of the alarms set on his phone and the way he had dragged himself kicking and screaming into being a morning person. He kissed Harry again, more fondly than he intended, and suddenly this felt like an important kind of thing.

"Don't rip my pants," he whispered against Harry's lips, "they're David Beckham for Calvin Klein," and Harry burst out laughing and the moment had passed.

Nick tugged his underwear off and pushed at Harry's shoulders until he lay back on the pillows; he slipped between Harry's legs and kissed him deeply, planting his hands either side of Harry's head. Harry gave as good as he got as he reached up to tangle his fingers in the hair at the nape of Nick's neck, reminding him he had a haircut on Saturday, his mouth fresh with Nick's toothpaste. There was probably no sound in the world but the breathy little sighs Harry was making, Nick reckoned.

Eventually, they became more urgent, and Nick felt his own dick hardening almost in tandem to the rising insistence of Harry's gasps, so he repositioned slightly and drove one knee upwards confidently.

As if he'd known what was coming, _which would be ridiculous since I'm so blasé and unpredictable_ , Nick knew, Harry started riding his thigh immediately. It wasn't with much intent, more in the fashion of someone who couldn't stop himself.

"Someone's eager, isn't she," Nick grinned, and then they both froze, both, Nick assumed, suddenly aware that they hadn't had sex since Harry's whole gender identity had started shifting. "Sorry," he said lamely, sitting back.

"Don't be," Harry said quickly, and it sounded genuine, so Nick kissed him again, still an apology. Harry pulled back to look up at him.

"Pretend I have tits?" Harry's expression said he hadn't meant to phrase that as a question; his eyes weren't glassed over anymore, something in them too aware and a little scared. Nick felt his heart ache with love, for a moment unable to breathe.

"Why pretend?" His voice was a little thin, but Harry looked like he wouldn't notice London exploding around them, so he figured it was fine. He ran one hand slowly up and traced across the butterfly a little, watching the goosbumps left in its wake, before cupping Harry's pec. He looked up to watch his eyes flutter closed, eyelashes impossibly long, his hair curling agaisnt his forehead.

"I've always loved your tits," Nick rasped out, flicking a thumbnail over Harry's nipple. His throat worked like he was choking, but no sound came out as Nick lent forward and nipped at his collarbone, dragged his tongue down and over the bird, sloppily pressed a kiss to his nipple. Harry's hips jerked up against him so he lent down, pressing his forearm across the laurels to stop him from moving. "Easy, love," he whispered, and bit down gently.

Hands fisted his hair so tight and quick that it hurt, and not in a fun way, but it was only a millisecond before Harry let go again, his whole body blushing with shame at his loss of control. "Nick," he whined, "Nick-" but he couldn't get his words out. His thighs clenched around Nick's sides like a vice, heels digging into the bottom of his spine.

"No quick satisfaction for you, Haz," he said against Harry's skin, "not tonight, greedy thing."

"Worship me," Harry said, sounding too utterly wrecked already to pretend it wasn't a command. From anyone else, Nick would have hated a command.

"Worship you," he agreed, feeling oxymoronically like a god, "worship your tits too, so soft and, er-" he cast around desperately for a word that people used for boobs to make them sound desirable. "Perky?" The godlike feeling passed as quickly as it had arrived.

Harry's breathless laugh soothed the bruise now forming on his ego a bit. "Not really a boobs guy, are you." Nick didn't know if he was imagining the disappointment in his voice.

"Shut up, Styles," he pushed forward to steal the grin from his lips, both hands now free to massage Harry's chest as half his brain tried to remember what that last girl he'd had a threesome with had liked vis-a-vis boobs, and the other half fizzed about incoherently on the feel of Harry's kiss. He must have got something right though, as Harry's hands fluttered between gripping Nick's biceps and back and neck, gasping into his mouth. Nick pulled back for air and took in the sight of him, lips spit-slicked and red, pupils blown wide and dark, chest heaving with trembling breaths.

"You're a bloody wet dream, darling," he said honestly, and dropped his head to suck a hickey just over Harry's heart.

"Nick, God, please-" Harry's words dissolved into meaningless syllables, vocal in a way he'd never been before, and Nick reached down between them to give him a hand to fuck into. Even with the sweat and precum, there was more friction than could possibly feel good, so he brought his hand back to his mouth and spat into it. If he had been a rock star, Nick reflected, this could have looked sexy maybe, but instead he just dribbled into his palm for a little while then swept it between his fingers with his tongue, not sure if the salty taste was his sweat or Harry's. He reached back down, but Harry had gone still.

"You're so hot," his voice rumbled an octave below where it should have been as he lent forward to press another kiss to Nick's lips, sweeter than anything, and this paradoxically expected contradiction almost overwhelmed Nick. For a good five seconds he couldn't form a single word ( _a record!_ supplied the Fiona voice in his head) for fear that he'd die of being too close to orgasming. When he had more of his grasp on reality back, he leaned down again and pressed the flat of his tongue to the budding hickey.

"Such a good boy," he said between kisses as he worked his way across Harry's chest, "such a pretty boy, such nice tits. That's why your shirt's always half undone, isn't it? Show off your pretty boobs to the world."

"Yes," Harry breathed, hips pushing deep and deliciously slowly up to fuck into Nick's hand.

"I like it when you're wearing one of my shirts, your tits peeking out of my shirt for the world to see," Nick said, free hand coming up to rub the pec he wasn't speaking onto. "Everyone's always looking at your tits, framed by your tattoos and your necklaces, drawing attention to themselves, but who can blame them when they're so gorgeous?"

Harry made a noise that was halfway between Nick's name and every swearword he knew. Nick pulled Harry's nipple into his mouth and suckled just to stifle the moan he could feel working its way out his throat, and suddenly Harry's dick pulsed as he made a noise like he'd been punched in the gut, and cum splashed up against Nick's stomach and chest in thick white ropes.

Nick giggled, despite himself. "A little warning next time, yeah love?" He asked once it looked like Harry could maybe process the words he was saying.

"Sorry-" he gasped, and panted for a few moments longer, gripping Nick's forearm, sucking air in like he was drowning.

"Sorry," he tried again once he'd gained a little composure, "you took me by surprise." Composure, in this case, was relative, Nick thought as Harry's wide eyes blinked up at him, slightly wet. "That was amazing."

"Yeah, well," Nick shrugged, faux-nonchalant, "you do have pretty tits."

Against him, he felt a shiver run through Harry's whole body, even his dick giving a half-hearted twitch.

"Don't worry," Nick continued, "I know you'll repay me," and _yes, that does the trick_ , he thought smugly as Harry pulled Nick's mouth to his own only to moan into it. They weren't even kissing, their mouths just held open against each other, as they rearranged to Nick straddling Harry's waist, where he sat up and had a devilish thought. He ran his hand through the drying cum on his own stomach then held it out towards Harry. "Lick," he commanded, and his brain almost short-circuited as Harry closed his eyes and did.

It was obscene, watching his tongue work its way round Nick's fingers, his lips working to suck off every whiteish drop, and a weirdly clear part of Nick's brain gave him credit for not pulling a face because there was no way that that could taste as amazing as he was making it look. His hands came up to grip Nick's wrist, turning his hand this way and that so he could work every angle. His eyelids flickered open and he looked up at Nick through his lashes, lips tight around his ring finger, and Nick had to look away, hating himself for it, or he'd not last out the minute. When he looked back, Harry met his eyes with an emotion Nick wouldn't like to name.

Harry's fingers dragged against his wrist as he pulled his hand back, but he let his hands fall to Nick's hips and just lay there, compliant, knowing what was about to happen. It only took a few tugs of his already painfully hard dick before Nick was coming with a grunt that even Harry couldn't find sexy, Nick hoped, and his vision blurred out.

 _No one should look that innocent with cum in their eyebrows,_  Nick thought exasperatedly when his eyesight returned, and the thought made him laugh. Harry joined in, a soul-deep joy in it, and Nick rolled off him to grab a tissue. Harry followed him into the bathroom and they cleaned themselves off, Nick helping Harry get the last of it off his face and Harry hindering progress considerably with his insistence on kissing Nick's neck and face every few seconds.

"Get off, you daft sod," Nick batted at him as he wrapped his arms around Nick's waist while they walked. Harry didn't even dignify him with a response, but he let him go as they fell back onto Nick's sheets, pulling the quilt back up. Their eyes held across the bed as they lay back onto separate pillows. Harry's were impossibly green in the orange light through the curtains after Nick turned off the lamp.

"Oh, come on then," Nick sighed after a minute of silent pleading.

"Pushover," Harry said, delighted, as he melded himself to Nick's side, rearranging their limbs to suit himself. Nick ended up flat on his back, Harry sprawled across his chest, lips to his jugular, one thigh between his own, fingers intertwined with Harry's.

"We'll be sweaty and gross in the morning," Nick warned.

"Yeah," Harry agreed, and Nick felt the vibration of his words inside his chest, below his lungs, a bit to the left. It took him quite a while to fall asleep after that, but he didn't really mind.

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly i didnt even like call me by ur name lol but i have Many Feelings about whether nick sees himself as elio or as oliver and whether he is right ~ hope u enjoyed reading , I'd love love love feedback so much , comments n kudos are lifeblood tbh
> 
> Also come scream with me on tumblr at [gricknimshaw](https://www.gricknimshaw.tumblr.com) ! I kinda wanna continue this but idk ... Pls gimme outside motivation ...
> 
> Thanks for reading !


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